Luka Doncic of the Los Angeles Lakers, here looking sad for Slovenia
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With the 2025 EuroBasket tournament kicking off this week, Los Angeles Lakers owner Jeanie Buss and president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka have travelled to Poland, in order to watch Lakers superstar Luka Doncic play for the Slovenian national team. And while on tour, Buss did an interview for Slovenian radio station, Radio 1, which inevitably focused on Luka in particular.
Asked about the tremendous surprise that accompanied Doncic’s staggering acquisition in trade from the Dallas Mavericks back in February, Buss said she was struck as just how “sad” Doncic was when he first arrived. The shock that the wider NBA world felt was born just as acutely by the man most involved in it, who knew nothing of the deal until it was done.
“Nobody knew the trade was going to happen”, said Buss. “I knew, but he didn’t know. I’ve never had a player come to the Lakers and be as sad as he was, because the trade was such a huge surprise to him.”
“He is a real person, and he had to process what happened. [However,] I think now he’s embraced the Lakers – and he’s all about L.A.”
Trade Still Shocking Today
Even with the passage of time, the Doncic trade still feels implausible. It is the only trade in NBA history so unexpected, so outlandish, so bewildering, as to have its own Wikipedia page. Questions about the surprise are still valid, because people are still processing it all. And as one of the very few who knew in advance, Buss is one of the best positioned to answer them.
Buss’s comments come as a part of an offseason press tour in which the Lakers brass – and Luka himself – want to put as much distance as they can from him and the leaks out of Dallas designed to justify the deal from their end. In light of the whispers surrounding Doncic’s supposed apathetic approach to conditioning and concerns over his longevity, the Lakers are making a point of showing how rejuvenated and lithe Doncic is.
The EuroBasket tournament will be a great way to demonstrate that. Led by Doncic, they won the 2017 edition of the competition – which was also their first-ever medal – before putting together a fourth-placed finish at the 2020 Olympics, the first time they had ever qualified. Doncic, as ever, was the driving force behind both of those, and if Slovenia are to make any noise in 2025, he will be the one to do most of it.
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Doncic’s Spiritual Lakers Connection
In the same interview, Buss would also talk about the serendipitous benefits of the Lakers acquiring Doncic, given that he had the endorsement of the team’s previous great – the late Kobe Bryant.
“The last time I saw Kobe Bryant alive, he brought his daughter Gianna to the Lakers game to see Luka play, because Luka was Gianna’s favorite player,” added Buss. “So they have always been connected in some way, and I knew that if the opportunity to have somebody like Luka on the Lakers, then it would all work out.”
So one-sided and automatic was the trade that no spiritual reasoning was required. Nonetheless, once the dust settled on the trade, it was immediately apparent that the Lakers had a steal for the ages. And as rattled as he will have been by leaving the only NBA team he had ever known – and all the fall-out that came as a result – Doncic ended up in one of the NBA’s favored cities, along with LeBron James for company.
Doncic, Buss wants us to know, was sad. But the Lakers also want you to know that he is very much with the program now.
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